Wonders of the World

Wonders of the World: Lecture 2

Schmidt Number: S-2428

On-line since: 31st March, 2002

Lecture 2

19th August, 1911

Y

ESTERDAY
I tried to give you some idea of the way the Greeks thought about the
relationship between the human soul and our Earth evolution, laying
special emphasis upon two things. I said the Greeks were conscious
that in primeval times the soul had been gifted with clairvoyance,
and they regarded Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, as the ruler
of those clairvoyant powers which played into men's souls from
the cosmos. On the other hand I showed how the entire intellectual
civilisation of mankind can be traced back to the stream associated
with the names of Odysseus, Menelaus and Agamemnon. I tried to make
you feel that this civilisation calls for a continual sacrifice. Thus
the finest feelings and sentiments of which the human soul is
capable, when it comes under the influence of this intellectual
civilisation, were offered up to a kind of religious sacerdotal-ism,
and the sacrifice of Iphigenia expresses this thought for us. Such
views enable us to realise that the tradition, and to a certain
extent the actual knowledge, of what we are now endeavouring to
regain through Spiritual Science was still very much alive in ancient
Greece. We draw attention to the fact that in primeval times the soul
had clairvoyant capacities. You can read in my
Occult Science — An Outline
how in Atlantis men saw into the spiritual
world and how cosmic forces appeared to them as actual forms or
figures; so that men did not then speak of abstract forces, but of
real Beings. Such a figure as Persephone is a relic of this
consciousness. Through Spiritual Science we are struggling gradually
to come to know again from our modern viewpoint the same living
reality in the spiritual world which was familiar to men in primeval
times, the same living Beings who lay hid behind the figures of Greek
mythology.

The more deeply one
goes into Greek mythology, the greater is one's respect,
one's admiration, for the profound cosmic wisdom which lies
behind it. To give you some idea of this, let me just mention one
thing. I said yesterday that Greek mythology draws attention to two
different trends — to the intellectual civilisation associated
with the names of Menelaus, Agamemnon and Odysseus, and so
beautifully exemplified in the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and to the
other culture associated with Persephone and her mother Demeter. Now
a thoughtful person will naturally reflect that such movements do not
take their course in complete independence. Despite their apparent
separation there must have been a point of contact somewhere. How
does Greek mythology express this profound truth? We know that modern
scholarship has nothing but a few abstract ideas to offer in this
connection. But Greek mythology traces the ancestry of Agamemnon back
to a representative of human soul-forces whom we may call Tantalus.
According to the Greek legend Tantalus wantonly offered his own son
to the gods as food. We know too that the gods recognised the impious
nature of this act, and only one — a goddess — partook of
a shoulder-blade. That goddess was Demeter. In this remarkable touch
of symbolism — Demeter's eating of the shoulder-blade of
the son of Tantalus — we find an indication that there is a
connection between the two streams. It confirms that Demeter forces
enter into the entire modern civilisation associated with the names
of Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus. Thus every item of Greek
mythology has its correspondence in what we are bringing to light
again in the form of modern spiritual wisdom. It is worth while to
call attention now and again to such deeply significant features. It
brings home to us the fact that the way man looks at the wonders of
Nature changes in course of time. Our natural science is proud of its
interpretation of Nature. There seems little ground for this pride
when we reflect that by representing the force hidden in the depths
of Nature as the female ruler of the wonders of Nature, the Greek
system of divinities showed a far deeper wisdom than the science of
today has any inkling of, or will so much as guess at until Spiritual
Science is allowed to penetrate into our civilisation. It can give a
considerable spur to our own knowledge, to the knowledge which we
have acquired in the course of years, to consider it in relation to
the depths of wisdom in Greek mythology.

One feature of
The Mystery of Eleusis
draws attention to an important
natural wonder. What is really the crucial event of the drama?
Persephone, who represents the ancient clairvoyant forces of the
human soul, is carried off by Pluto, the god of the underworld. The
whole wondrous action comes alive for you in the Pluto scene of the
reconstructed drama; once more we have it before our very eyes ...
what does it mean, when we apply what Greek mythology and the Mystery
of Eleusis thus express to the nature of man himself? What in terms
of Spiritual Science has happened to the old clairvoyant faculty of
the human soul? This rape of Persephone has in fact been going on
from the earliest times right up to our own day; the old clairvoyant
culture has vanished. But nothing in the world ever really
disappears, things are really only transformed. Whither, then, has
Persephone gone? What is the Regent of the old clairvoyant forces
doing today in human nature? In the opening chapters of a little book
[ 1 ]
now on the verge of publication, and
which virtually reproduces the contents of my recent lectures in
Copenhagen, you can read that the human soul encompasses far more
than what it knows by way of intellect, by way of reason. A more
comprehensive soul-life, a subconscious soul-life, is at work in us
— it is better to call it subconscious rather than
unconscious—a soul-life which in most modern men does not
emerge into consciousness at all. In this subconscious life which is
at work today in the human being without his being able to give a
reasoned account of it, is Persephone; that is where the suppressed
clairvoyant forces have gone. Whereas in primeval times they worked
in such a way that the soul could see into spiritual worlds, today
they work in the depths of the human soul. They assist in the
development and formation of the ego principle, making it firmer and
firmer. Whereas in primeval times these forces were dedicated to the
task of making man clairvoyant, today they devote themselves to the
establishing to the consolidation of our ego. Thus these Persephone
forces have been drawn down into the human subconscious, they have
been embraced, have so to say been raped, by the depths of the human
soul. Thus in the course of the historical development of humanity,
the rape of Persephone has been brought about by soul-forces which
lie deep in the subconscious, forces which in outer Nature are
represented as Pluto. According to Greek mythology Pluto is the ruler
of the underworld, of the interior of the earth. But the Greek was
also aware that the same forces which are at work in the depths of
the earth are also at work in the depths of the human soul. Just as
Persephone was carried off by Pluto, in the same way, in the course
of human development, the soul was robbed of its ancient clairvoyant
capacity through Pluto's intervention.

Now Persephone is
Demeter's daughter, and so we infer that in Demeter we have a
still older ruler, both of the forces of external Nature and of the
forces of the human soul. I said yesterday that Demeter is a figure
of Greek mythology whom we associate with the kind of clairvoyant
vision which belongs to the very oldest endowment of wisdom of
Atlantean humanity — for it is in Atlantis that Demeter is
really to be found. When an Atlantean man gazed into the spiritual
world, he saw Demeter; she really came to meet him. When, out of this
spiritual world, this whirling world of constant movement and
changing forms, the archetypal mother of the human soul and of the
fruitful forces of Nature appeared to him, what did he say? He said
to himself, not in full consciousness, but as it were in the
unconscious, ‘I myself have done nothing, I have gone through
no inner development, as later ages will do, in order to see into the
spiritual world. The same forces of Nature which have given me my
eyes, my brain, my organism, and are active in me, these very same
forces give me also the power of clairvoyance; just as I breathe, so
also I have clairvoyant sight.’ Just as man went through no
special development to produce breathing, so at that time he did not
form his own clairvoyant faculty, but both these things were given to
him by the powers of Nature, by divine Beings. When man turned his
attention to what was outside him, to what existed all around him,
and along with the sensible received the spiritual, he consciously
felt: ‘I absorb into myself the substance of the plant kingdom
in the world around me (a plant kingdom quite different from our
present one), I absorb from outside everything that is growing, but
with the substances I take in also the forces active in them.’
The man of that time was not so hopelessly limited in his outlook as
to believe that what he took in as food was only physical substance,
only something which could be analysed by the chemist; he knew that
with the substances he took in the inner configuration of the forces
which are active in them, and that it is these forces which construct
him, which build up his body again. Atlantean man said to himself:
‘Outside in Nature, forces are at work; through my breathing
and through the food I eat they enter into me. What they are outside
me is under the control of the great Demeter. But Demeter sends these
forces into the human soul, there they are worked upon and
transformed into the faculty of clairvoyance.’ (We may call
these forces the process of digestion, but the digestion was then a
spiritual one.) ‘Through the forces under the control of
Demeter, the fecundating goddess of the whole world, the clairvoyant
capacity represented by Persephone is born in the human
organisation.’ Thus Atlantean man feels that he too has his
place among the wonders of Nature. He feels this clairvoyant capacity
born in him as the birth of Persephone, he feels that he owes this
birth to Demeter, who spreads abroad in the wide cosmos the very same
forces which in man develop into the faculty of clairvoyance.

Thus the man of old
looked up to the great Demeter, and in ancient Greece man was still
aware that it had once been so. But you will have already realised
from this that the human organism, the entire bodily constitution,
has changed since those ancient times. The human body of today, with
its organisation of muscle and bone, is substantially denser, more
compact, than the bodies of those men who were still able to give
birth to Persephone within themselves, since they still had the
faculty of clairvoyance. And because this organism of ours has become
denser, it can also hold fast the clairvoyant forces in the
sub-earthly realm of the soul. The imprisonment of the clairvoyant
forces within human nature comes about as a result of the
densification of the human body. And when the ancient Greek feels the
old, more delicate, rarefied body becoming denser, it is because he
is taking in forces which are active in the inner earth, whereas
formerly he had been more under the sway of forces connected with the
surrounding air, which rendered him in consequence softer, more
supple. And what is active in the sub-earthly realm, the realm
governed by Pluto, obtained a greater and greater influence on the
human body, so that we may say that Pluto obtained an ever increasing
hold over man; he densified the human body and in doing so abducted
Persephone. This densification went on right into the physical body.
For even in the earlier postAtlantean times the human organisation
appeared very different from what it does today. It is very
shortsighted to think that the human being was always formed as he is
today.

Thus we see that the
rape of Persephone and man's connection with Demeter are really
expressions of the wonders of Nature within man himself. They show us
how Greek mythology was dominated by the consciousness that man is a
microcosm, an expression of the macrocosm, the great cosmos. As
Demeter works without in the powerful forces of all that brings forth
fruit from the Earth, so also is what comes from Demeter active
within us. As the forces represented in Greek mythology by Pluto are
active within the Earth and not on the Earth's surface, so does
Pluto work in man's own organism. We must be able to blot out
entirely the usual way of looking at things today, our own habits and
customs, if we want to understand the completely different habit of
thought even of people as recent as the Greeks. When the modern man
wants to make laws he looks to the government, he looks to his
parliaments. This is of course, not a criticism, it is merely a
comment. That is where our laws come from today, and a man would
probably be considered a fool if he were to put forward the theory
that cosmic forces pass through the heads of the sitting members! We
will not pursue this any further; it is sufficient that the man of
today would find such an idea grotesque.

It was not so in
prehistoric times, it was not even so in ancient Greece. In those
times there was prevalent an idea so wonderful, so impressive, that
modern man can scarcely believe it. Think of all that I have told you
about the development of the Greek gods. I pointed out how Demeter
worked in ancient times, how she instilled her forces into human
nature — her forces which were active in the plants and caused
her child to be born in that human nature. That is what Demeter did
in ancient times. Now there were also other gods working in like
fashion both with the forces of Nature and the wonders of Nature. How
did they work? Well, when the human being ate and when he breathed,
he knew that the forces which he took in from the air and from the
plants came from Demeter, and he knew that it was Demeter who gave
him his clairvoyant consciousness, but he knew too that it was she
who taught him how he had to behave in the world. There were at that
time no laws in the later meaning of the term, there were no
commandments outwardly expressed, but since man was clairvoyant, it
dawned in him clairvoyantly how he ought to behave, what was right,
what was good. Thus in those very remote times he saw Demeter, who
gave him his food, also as the cosmic power of Nature who, when he
took in foodstuffs, so transformed their forces within him that they
gave him his morality, his rule of conduct. And the man of old said
to himself: ‘I gaze upwards to the great Demeter, and whenever
I accomplish something in the world, I do so because forces active in
the plant world without are sent into my brain.’ This Demeter
of old was a law-giver, giving law which did not flash up into
consciousness, but which was self-evident, impelling the soul. And it
was the same with other gods. In nourishing human beings, in causing
them to breathe, in prompting in them impulses to walk and to stand,
they at the same time gave men the impulse for morality, for the
whole of their outer conduct. When the gods assumed the forms they
had later and of which we have spoken ... when Demeter saw her
child Persephone lost in man's nature, saw her raped as it were
by the now denser human body so that these clairvoyant forces could
henceforth only be used for coarser bodily nutrition. ... When at
that point she so to say gave up imparting the moral law directly,
what did she do? She instituted a Mystery, thereby providing a
substitute, a new form of law, for the old law which worked through
the forces of Nature. Thus the gods withdrew from the forces of
Nature into the Mysteries, and gave moral precepts to men who no
longer possessed a morality drawn from the activity of Nature within
them.

This was the essence
of Greek thought in the matter, that originally the gods bestowed
morality upon men along with the forces of Nature; then the forces of
Nature more or less withdrew, and later the gods substituted a moral
law in a more abstract form through their messengers in the
Mysteries. When man became estranged from Nature he needed a more
abstract, a more intellectual morality, hence the Greeks looked to
their Mysteries for guidance in their moral life, and in the
Mysteries they saw the activity of the gods, as previously they had
seen their activity in the forces of Nature. For this reason the
earliest Greek period attributed the moral law to the same gods who
were at the back of the forces of Nature. When the Greeks spoke of
the origin of their earliest laws they did not refer to a parliament,
but to gods who had come down to men and who had in the Mysteries
given them the laws which continue to live in human morality.

But as the human body
became denser and denser, as it became transformed, what happened to
the original Demeter forces? If I may use a very rough illustration,
you all know that one cannot do with ice what one can do with water,
because ice is in another form. In the same way one cannot do with
the solid human body what it was once possible, out of the forces of
Nature, to do with the finer body. Into this more rarefied body
Demeter had been able to instil, with the products of Nature, the
spiritual forces which were in them and thereby to develop
clairvoyant forces.

What became of the
Demeter forces as a result of the solidifying of the human body, or
to use the language of Greek mythology, through the rape of
Persephone by Pluto? They had to take a back place in the
organisation of the human body, they had to become less active; man
had to be alienated from the direct influence of Demeter, to become
subject to other forces, forces to which I called attention
yesterday. What is it that makes the denser human body fresh and
healthy? Just as of old it was Demeter, now it is Eros, it is what
is represented in the Nature-forces by Eros, who brings this about.
If Eros were not working upon the human body, if Demeter had
continued to work, the body would be shrivelled and wrinkled
throughout life. Today, Demeter forces are not to be found in
youthful bodies, in chubby rosy cheeks; they are in the body just
when it eliminates the Eros forces, as it does when it becomes older,
when it becomes shrivelled and wrinkled. This profound truth is
actually portrayed in
The Mystery of Eleusis.
After the rape
of Persephone, Demeter appears before us denuded of her original
forces. She is transformed by Hecate, so transformed that she now
bears the forces of decline. The rape of Persephone also represents
the withdrawal of Demeter from the bodily organisation in the course
of the historical development of humanity. How splendidly those
ancient wonders of Nature are expressed in the figures of the ancient
gods! When in old age Eros begins to withdraw from the human body,
then the influence of Demeter begins again. Then Demeter can, once
again in a way, enter the body, then forces of fruitful chastity can
predominate, while the Eros forces fall into the background. We are
touching upon a tremendous mystery in human growth, human
development, when we speak of old age, when we speak of the
metamorphosis of Eros into Demeter forces. Secrets such as this were
hidden deep within the Eleusinian drama, so deeply hidden that no
doubt anyone with the usual education of today would regard
everything I have just said as fantasy. In fact, however, it is the
pronouncements of materialistic science about these things that are
fantastic, that is where all the dreaming and the superstition really
lie!

What
is it then that, between the time of Atlantis and our own time, has
really changed in human nature? It is that part of man in which his
essential being is ensheathed. His essential being is enclosed in
three bodily sheaths; it is enclosed in the physical body, the ether
body and the astral body; our innermost, our ego, is hidden within
these three sheaths. These three have all become different in the
course of evolution from the age of Atlantis up to our own time. What
is the essential drive which makes these sheaths different? We have
to look for this impulse primarily in the ether body. It is the ether
body which is the energising influence, which is the really impelling
factor. It is the ether body which has made the physical body denser,
and which has also transformed the astral body. For these three
bodies are not like the rind of a fruit, or the layers of an onion,
one outside the other, but their forces mutually interpenetrate, they
are in living interplay with one another. The sheath which plays the
most important part in this process of transformation, in this
historical development of the human being, is the ether body. Let us
make a diagram of the three bodies to illustrate this. I will draw
them simply as three layers lying one under the other.

Diagram 1Click image for large view

We have to look for
the real forces, the effectual forces, especially those of Eros and
Demeter here in the ether body; from the etheric they are sent
upwards into the astral body, and downwards into the physical body;
that is to say, the ether body has an influence both on the astral
and upon the physical bodies. During the period I have referred to
the ether body makes the physical body definitely denser, more
compact; it so transforms the astral body that it no longer develops
forces of clairvoyance, but only the intellectual forces of human
nature. Because man has been transformed in this way, because the
ether body has brought about a transformation in all three bodies,
important and fundamental changes have taken place. They have all
three been changed. The Atlantean body, even a post-Atlantean body of
the first period, was utterly different from a body of the present
day. All the relationships and conditions of life were quite
different, everything has changed.

If we look at the
physical body as it develops from the earliest times right up to the
present day, we see that through having become denser it has come
more under the influence of its physical environment whereas the
delicate physical body of old was more subject to the spiritual
conditions of existence. Hence certain characteristics of the
physical body which did not exist earlier in a similar form have been
enhanced; the causes of disease, of illness, in the physical body in
particular have become quite different. In olden times what we call
sickness and health were due to quite other causes. In those times
human health was directly dependent upon conditions in the spiritual
world. Today the physical body is bound up with external physical
conditions and therefore dependent upon them; today we have to look
for the requisite conditions for health more to the external physical
environment. Thus, to use the language of Greek mythology, because of
the rape of Persephone by Pluto and her captivity in the nether world
of human nature, man in his inmost being has become subject, so far
as sickness and health are concerned, to external conditions. That is
one of the things which has happened to humanity.

The second thing has
to do with the ether body itself. Besides being the source
of the forces of metamorphosis, the ether body has also changed in
itself. In primeval times this ether body was so organised that the
human being did not get to know the world in the way he does today;
but when through the old Persephone clairvoyance he gazed into the
spiritual world he saw pictures of spiritual Beings. Man saw around
him a world of images. Of course it was the forces of the astral body
which called forth these images, but the astral body would not have
been able to see them if it had depended upon itself alone. The
astral body does not of itself see images. Just as a man does not see
himself advancing unless a mirror confronts him, so the astral body
would not see the images it produces if its activity were not so to
say reflected back by the ether body. Thus it is the ether body which
brings to the point of vision, to perception, the images called forth
by the astral body. What man perceives of the goings-on in his own
astral body is what is mirrored for him by his ether body. If all our
inner astral processes were not reflected by our ether bodies we
should of course still have the astral body's activity within
us, but we should not be aware of it, we should not perceive it.
Hence the whole picture of the world which the human being makes, the
total content of his consciousness is a reflection of his ether body.
Whether a man knows anything of the world depends upon his ether
body. This was so in the old clairvoyant days, and it is still so
today.

What is the secret of
the ether body? Its secret is that it is the key to knowledge of the
world. What the world brings about in the astral body would not open
the door to knowledge of the world were it not for the ether body.
The ether body contains all that I have referred to in certain
passages of the two Mystery Plays
[ 2 ]
of mine which you have just seen performed. The Plays mention the
labyrinth of thought, the threads which have to weave our knowledge
of the world. We do not come to know the world merely by looking at it.
Either, as in the old clairvoyance, we move from picture to picture,
or as in modern intellectualism, we move from thought to thought as
if through a labyrinth. This association too is brought about by the
activity of the ether body. Thus what we may call the key and what we
may call the threads which connect the single images of our
consciousness when we acquire knowledge of the world have both
undergone a change. Thus you see what is dependent on the forces of
the ether body and what has to be changed in these forces.

Let us now consider
the third member, the astral body itself. This is the element in us
which is subject to the influences of the world and in which the
forces and the skills are formed which are then reflected by the
ether body. Knowledge is kindled in the astral body; it is
brought to consciousness through the ether body. A thought,
an image, is kindled in the astral body; we have these in us because
we have astral bodies. But these thoughts and images become conscious
in us because we have ether bodies; they would still be in us even if
we had no ether bodies, but we should not be aware of them. The torch
of knowledge is kindled in the astral body; this torch is reflected
as conscious knowledge in the ether body. This torch of knowledge
which is kindled in the astral body has changed in the course of the
historical development of mankind; in ancient times man had
clairvoyant or imaginal knowledge; today he has
intellectual or rational knowledge. That is the
change which has come about in the astral body.

Thus during the
course of the historical development of man forces have been at work
in his nature which have changed his whole relationship with Demeter.
Out of the human body, once so rarefied, Demeter was so to say
driven. She was driven out of the astral body with its lost
clairvoyant capacities and Eros took her place. In return, as I have
shown you today, certain different Eros-free forces in human nature
came more under the sway of Demeter. Thus during this period from the
time of Atlantis up to the present day a force has been working on
the development of human nature in three ways: there is a triple kind
of development, of transformation, a triple kind of metamorphosis,
emanating from the ether body and working upon the physical body,
upon the ether body itself, and upon the astral body. This force of
genetic change has been and still is in human nature. It changes us
from youth to age by leading over the forces of Eros into those of
Demeter. There is in our organisation this threefold development
which in the physical body brings about changes in the conditions
affecting sickness and health, which causes the ether body to reflect
knowledge in a different way, and which transmutes the torch of
knowledge in the astral body. How wonderful it is to find these
genetic forces represented in Greek mythology, forces which are
active in all of us, forces which transform our astral bodies and
therefore the nature of Demeter herself. These human etheric forces
which work upon the physical body, upon the ether body itself and
upon the astral body are represented by the threefold Hecate. Whereas
today we say that forces of metamorphosis emanate from the ether body
in a threefold way, the Greek spoke of the threefold Hecate.

One of Nature's
wonders in the genesis of the human organisation is expressed in this
threefold Hecate. We there get a glimpse into immense wisdom. You can
still see the statue of this ‘triple Hecate’ in Rome today.
[ 3 ]
It reveals how one of her aspects has
to do with the conditions determining sickness and health, being
furnished with the symbols of the #8224 and the serpent (this latter
symbol was also assigned to Aesculapius as the representative of
medicine). The #8224 represents the external destructive influences
upon the human organism. The endowment of one aspect of the threefold
Hecate with these emblems indicates forces which act upon the ether
body in its development. The second aspect of Hecate had to indicate
that in the ether body itself the key to knowledge of the world had
changed; what are the symbols shown by this second form? They are the
key and the coil of rope, typifying the labyrinth of thought. The
third Hecate carries a torch—the torch of knowledge developed
in the astral body. We cannot help feeling that the way in which this
profoundly meaningful figure is regarded in our materialistic age is
one great mass of superstition. What new life such profound and
impressive symbols as that of the threefold Hecate will acquire when
we know once more what they mean! When the soul steeped in Spiritual
Science stands before such a statue, ancient Greece will arise anew
in her thought, all the knowledge of the spiritual nature of man
mysteriously hidden in such a statue will stream into her again. We
should not take these things in an abstract way. Of course we can
only express them by clothing them in abstract thought, but all this
can become for us living feeling if we permeate ourselves with the
consciousness that Hecate has only changed the manner of her
activity, that she is in us even today, is at work in every single
one of us.

The ancient Greek
said that not only humanity as a whole but every individual is
subject in his development to the forces of Hecate, in the changes
undergone by physical, etheric and astral bodies. Hecate works in man
in a threefold way. But what was communicated to the soul at that
time in pictorial form can also be learnt again today. How is this
expressed by the pupil of Spiritual Science, who no longer speaks in
this pictorial way? He says that in the course of the development of
the individual from birth to maturity his sheaths undergo changes. In
the first seven years the physical body is changed, in the second
seven years the ether body, in the third seven years the astral body.
The forces which you find described in my little book
Education of the Child
[ 4 ]
without the use
of pictures, work in the human organisation in a threefold way. They
are the Hecate forces. When Spiritual Science describes for you how
up to the change of teeth the human being develops primarily his
physical body, it is saying that one form of Hecate is working in
him. There we are saying in a modern way what the Greek meant when he
represented one part of Hecate with #8224 and serpent; and the
second seven years of transformation, when the ether body works upon
itself, is represented in the key and the coil of rope; and the third
seven years, during which changes take place in the astral body, is
represented in the emblem of the torch. Thus long ago I said in
modern form what was expressed in the ancient Greek Mysteries by the
figure of Hecate.

That is also the
meaning of the development of our European civilisation. Going back
to Greek times, we find in the tradition of Greek mysticism, of Greek
mythology, the powerful pictures which were placed before the pupils
in order to awaken in them the knowledge which man at that time
needed. In a different way the figure of the threefold Hecate
awakened the knowledge which we today absorb when we grasp the
doctrine of the threefold change which takes place between birth and
about the age of twenty. And when we understand such teaching, then
we grasp correctly the course which human civilisation has to take.
The old clairvoyant form of knowledge had to be buried in the
Plutonic region of the human soul, and for a period, from the time of
Socrates right up to our own day, men had to remain more or less in
ignorance about all these things. Men had to build up, to
consolidate, their egos. But under the surface the old knowledge, the
knowledge aroused by those impressive pictorial images of the Greeks,
still remained. It was buried as it were under the load of
intellectual culture. Now it is emerging again from the dark depths
of the spirit. What was submerged in the depths of the soul is coming
to the surface again for the life of today in the form of Spiritual
Science. Today we are again beginning in the way I have described in
Education of the Child
to recognise the threefold Hecate
in a more abstract way. This is preparing the human soul for a future
clairvoyance which is already in sight, notwithstanding our
intellectualism.

The triple Hecate,
Demeter, Persephone, and all those other figures of whom Greek
mythology tells us, were not in Greek times abstractions as the
credulous scholars of today imagine. No, they were living figures of
Greek seership! All these figures will appear again to clairvoyant
vision, which in the future will press more and more urgently upon
man from the spiritual world. And the force which penetrates into
human souls in order to lead them up again to clairvoyance — or
I could also say in order to bring down clairvoyance to them —
is the force which was first prepared as conscious thought in the old
Jahve civilisation, and then reached its full development through the
coming of the Christ Being, who will become ever better understood by
men. And when among the adherents of genuine Spiritual Science it is
said that this clairvoyant vision of the Christ, who has been united
with the Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha, is already beginning in
this twentieth century, it is also made clear that this return of
Christ will certainly not be in a physical body, but will come about
for etheric vision, as it did for Paul at Damascus.
[ 5 ]
The power of the Christ provides all the impulses to
enable human nature to rise again and to see all that has been buried
in the depths of the soul — such as for instance, the figures
of the Greek gods. That will be the greatest event for the future
history of the human soul. It is the event for which Spiritual
Science must prepare, so that the soul may become capable of
acquiring the etheric vision. In the next three thousand years it
will lay hold of more and more souls, the next three thousand years
will be devoted to kindling the forces in the human soul which will
make it aware of the etheric wonders of Nature around it. It will
begin to happen in our own century that one here and one there will
see with their etheric souls the reappearing Christ, and within the
next three thousand years more and more men will see Him. Then will
come the fulfilment of the true oriental tradition, a tradition with
which all true occultism is in agreement. At the end of three
thousand years the Maitreya Buddha will descend, and will speak to
humanity in a form which every human soul will understand, and will
mediate the Christ-nature to man. That is the secret guarded by
oriental mysticism, that about three thousand years after our time
the Maitreya Buddha will appear. What can be added as the
contribution of western culture is that the cosmic Individuality who
has only once appeared in a human body will become ever more
visible to the etheric vision of man; you will find this again
emphasised in my Mystery Play,
The Soul's Probation.
The Soul's Probation.
Thereby He will become a trusted friend of the human soul. Just as
two thousand years ago the Buddha spoke of what was natural to the
best human souls of his time, so in words which will thrill the soul,
the Maitreya Buddha will be able to proclaim everywhere what today
cannot be proclaimed publicly: the vision of the Christ in the
etheric world which is to come. That is the greatest event of the
twentieth century, this upward development of human nature towards
what we may call the recurrence of the vision of St. Paul. In the
vision at Damascus it came to one person only; in the future it will
come little by little to all humanity, beginning in our own century.
Whoever has faith in the progress of human nature, whoever believes
that the soul will develop ever higher and higher powers, knows that
it was necessary for the soul which had sunk to the uttermost depths
of the physical plane, that the Christ too should appear once in a
physical body. It was necessary because at that time the soul could
only see the Godhead in a body which was visible to the physical eye,
to physical organs. But because, after the old Hebrew civilisation
had paved the way for it, this event did take place, the soul is
being led to ever higher capacities. The soul's heightened
capacities will show themselves in that man will learn to see the
Christ even when He no longer walks among men in a physical body,
when He shows Himself as He is among us now, as He has been since the
Mystery of Golgotha, visible of course only for clairvoyant sight.
Christ is here, He is united with the ether body of the Earth. What
matters is that the soul should develop so as to be able to see
Him.

Herein lies the great
advance in the evolution of the human soul. Anyone who believes in
this progress, who believes that Spiritual Science has a mission to
fulfil in regard to it, will understand that the powers of the soul
must become ever higher, and that it would mean stagnation if in our
time the soul were obliged to see the Christ in the same physical
form in which He was once seen. He will know that there is a sublime
meaning in the old Rosicrucian formula about God the Son, who once,
and once only, incarnated in a human body, but Who, beginning from
our own century, will become visible as an etheric Being to human
souls to an ever increasing extent. This is confirmed by prophecy as
well as by our own knowledge. Anyone who believes in human progress
believes in this Second Coming of the Christ, who will be visible to
those endowed with etheric sight. Those who refuse to believe in this
progress may well believe that the powers of the soul remain
stationary, and still today need to see the Christ in the same form
in which He was seen when humanity was plunged in the uttermost
depths of matter. They are the ones who can believe in a Second
Coming of Christ in a physical body.